


Tea Parties

by beyourmythical-bitch (dip_the_pip)



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Babysitting, Fluff, rhett in a tiara and a dress, soft, this is all just really cute and nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 11:11:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21373204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dip_the_pip/pseuds/beyourmythical-bitch
Summary: Rhett comes over to babysit Lily while her parents have a date night. She insists they have a tea party.
Relationships: Christy Neal/Link Neal, Jessie McLaughlin/Rhett McLaughlin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36





	Tea Parties

“Pea Party?” The small girl says, holding up a teacup to Rhett.

Rhett chuckles lowly, scooping Lily up into his arms and gently pinching her cheek. “Uncle Rhettster doesn’t do tea parties, darlin’.”

She pouts at him and lets the plastic teacup fall from her little hands, clanking on the ground. “Wan’ mommy,” She whines now, kicking her legs which ends up kicking Rhett in the gut.

“She’ll be back soon. Her and your daddy are out eating yummy food!” Rhett explains to the toddler, leaning down to pick up the plastic teacup and hand it back to her.

Rhett sees her eyes swell up a second before she lets out a blood-curdling cry. She kicks her legs more, crying and begging for her parents. Rhett bounces her in his arms, shushing her softly as he tries to figure out what to do.

Sure, he’s got his own son at home now, but he’s had no training when it comes to toddlers. Locke was still only a few months old. He takes her to the kitchen and sits her on the counter as he reaches in the cupboard above her head and grabs some cookies.

“Ookies…” She says over sniffles, bringing her small fist to wipe away the tears. She holds the chocolate chip cookie in both hands and begins to nibble on it, smiling. Rhett takes a bite of his own cookie, happy that he managed to quiet and calm her down.

Once her cookie is gone, she’s asking for another one, which Rhett has to say no to. “It’s getting late, Lil. Can’t have too many sweets before bed,” He says, putting the cookie box away as her cries start again. He rolls his eyes quickly before scooping her back up and going back to the livingroom.

“What do you want?” He asks the small girl, mostly out of frustration. He doesn’t think he’ll get an actual answer until he sees her eyes light up.

“Pea Party!” She says excitedly, clapping her hands and reaching for her teacup that Rhett was now carrying around for her. Rhett looks at her happy face before looking down at the teacup in his hand. He hands it over to her and sighs heavily.

“Alright, alright,” he gives in, chuckling softly. “We can have a tea party.”

Rhett sets her down on the floor when she starts squirming in his arms. She quickly runs over to her toy chest, throwing random plastic cutlery and cups on the floor behind her.

“Whett, you need to be a pwincess,” She says with determination, handing him a cheap looking tiara that Rhett knew wasn’t going to fit his head. There’s a small cartoon of a Disney princess on it, and Rhett can’t really put his finger on which one it is.

He looks at the tiara in his hands, turning it over a few times. “Shouldn’t I be a Prince maybe? Or maybe the jester!”

Lily shakes her head, putting on her own tiara with a different princess on it. “No! Daddy be pwincess, you be pwincess!” She huffs, stomping her foot down, which doesn’t really make any impact, but Rhett plays along and nods, putting the tiara on his head.

She claps her hands again and climbs up onto the couch, grabbing a throw blanket before going to the middle of the living room and struggling to unfold the blanket. Rhett gently takes it from her, unfolding it and spreading it out on the floor as she waddles over to everything she tossed from the toy box and gathers a much as she can in her arms.

Rhett helps her set up the tea party, occasionally having to fix the tiara that keeps falling from his head. As Rhett’s setting up the last of the tea party, Lily goes back to the toy box and pulls out a princess dress-up costume and pulls it on overtop of her pyjama’s that her parents had put her in before Rhett got there.

Rhett chuckles, watching as she fixes her dress and twirls, giggling.

“You need dwess too.” She says with determination, digging through the toybox again.

“I don’t think any of them will fit me, Lil. They’re meant for little ones like you, not big people like me.”

Lily shakes her head. “Gotta be pwetty! Mommy and Daddy wear dwesses,” She insists, shoving the pink princess dress into his hands.

Rhett sighs heavily, looking at the dress. He knows he won’t be able to even get it over his head, but he doesn’t want to upset Lily anymore that he already has tonight.

“Alright, alright. I can’t wear this dress, though,” he says, and he’s quick to continue when he sees her eyes well with tears again. “But if you can pinky promise me that you’ll be good, I can go and see what I can do.”

Lily smiles and hooks there pinkies together in a promise before she plops herself down on the blanket. Rhett sighs and gets up, heading towards Link and Christy’s room.

It feels a little invasive, but he think’s they’ve all been through enough altogether. Rhett’s doing what he has to do to make Link’s daughter happy, and Rhett’s certain Link would do the same thing if Rhett had a daughter.

He opens up their closet and looks through the dresses trying to find the biggest one. Christy was a lot smaller than him, majority of people were just because of his height alone, but he finds a flowery, floor-length sun dress that he’s sure will be good enough.

He pulls it on over top of his clothes, feeling like he at least owes it to Christy not to actually wear her dress.

He fixes the straps on his shoulders that he can’t comfortably wear, before deciding to let them hang off his shoulders. The dress was already so tight around his chest and clothing, the straps weren’t gonna do a whole lot.

Once he puts his tiara back on, he checks himself in their dresser mirror and sighs heavily. He stares at his reflection of him in his best friends’ wife’s dress and the plastic tiara, feeling ridiculous. It was all to make Lily happy though, that’s all that mattered.

He goes back out to the living room and it glad to see Lily is still sitting on the blanket and not causing any trouble.

When she hears him come back, she turns to him and stands up. She jumps up and down, clapping her hands together and giggling.

“Whett pwetty!” She says excitedly before grabbing his hand and pulling him to the blanket for the tea party.

They put on some children’s tv show as they pretend to sip at tea and eat pretend cookies.

As it gets later, they move to the couch. Rhett picks out a kid’s movie from their collection that he think’s he’d be able to sit through, Toy Story.

Rhett makes them a bag of popcorn and they pull blankets from the couch and curl up to watch the movie, Lily tucked into Rhett’s side.

Less than halfway through the movie, Lily falls asleep curled up against Rhett. Not long after that, Rhett falls asleep too, his head tilted back against the couch as he snores softly, and one arm wrapped protectively around Lily.

-

“Shh, shh, stay asleep princess, it’s just mommy,” Christy’s soft voice fills Rhett’s head as he feels warmth being taken away from his side. He hears the soft, sleepy whines of protest from the toddler as she’s lifted into her mom’s arms.

Rhett sleepily blinks his eyes open, seeing Christy carrying Lily down the hall to her bedroom, her head resting on her mom’s shoulder as she falls right back to sleep.

He rubs his eyes and lets out a long yawn as he sees Link come around the corner, chuckling softly.

“Have a good nap, sleeping beauty?” He teases, leaning against the wall.

“Mmph, shut up,” He mumbles, rubbing his face and letting out another long yawn, stretching his arms above his head.

“May I ask why you’re wearing my wife’s dress?”

Rhett stares at him with confusion for a moment before looking down at himself, realizing he was still dressed up. “Ah, Lil and I had a tea party,”

“Well, she got your tiara right.”

“Hm?”

Link gently takes it from his head, turning it towards him so he can look at the picture of the princess on it again. “Sleeping beauty,”

Rhett rolls his eyes and gets up, pulling the dress off and handing it to Link. “She was missing you guys. She said you’d dress up when you’d have a tea party with her too. I just wanted to make her happy.”

“Oh, dude. You got played by the toddler.” Link laughs, folding up the dress and grinning. “I’ll wear a tiara for her, but I’ve never worn a dress for her. Even Chris won’t wear a dress for her tea parties, since they happen like 5 times a day,”

“I- What,” Rhett stares at Link before looking towards Lily’s closed bedroom door where he could barely hear Christy singing to her. “Damn. She’s smart.” He chuckles, shaking his head. “She’s gonna be so much like you,” He says softly. “She already is.”

“Let’s just hope she gets some of Christy’s smarts,”

“She’s not getting any brains from you, man,” He elbows him playfully as he walks past him and to the front door to get his shoes on.

“Thanks for watching her tonight. Chris and I really needed the date night.”

Rhett smiles. “I know you guys will do the same for us once Locke gets a little bigger. At least you won’t have to worry about him trying to trick you into putting on a dress.”

Link shrugs, looking down at the dress in his hands. “I’m sure your son will trick me in other ways. I feel like these two are gonna be so evil together when they grow up. They’ll plan mischievous things, I’m sure of it.”

“Oh, absolutely. If they have any brothers or sisters, they’ll make them do all the dirty work too. They’ll just be the masterminds behind everything,” Rhett laughs, leaning against the closed front door.

“I hope they grow up to be best friends,”

“Absolutely not. They already spend so much time together, our kids are gonna practically be siblings. They won’t be best friend’s; they’ll be brother and sister. They’ll be family.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. They’ll all love each other no matter how much they piss each other off. Friends will always hate each other a little bit because of fights, but with our kids, it’ll just be part of growing up.”

Link shrugs. “I dunno how siblings really act besides you and Cole, but I really hope that’s the case.”

“They aren’t really gonna get a choice. I always thought maybe they’d see each other as cousins since we’ve been trying the whole “Uncle Rhett”, “Uncle Link”, thing, but I don’t think that’ll work out.”

Link chuckles softly. “Well Locke isn’t really old enough to call us anything, yet.”

Rhett shrugs and smiles. “Maybe they’ll just grow up to see us as two sets of parents. The Neal parents and the McLaughlin parents,”

Christy walks out of Lily’s room and goes to stand next to her husband, leaning into his side and wrapping her arms around his middle as Link wraps an arm around her shoulders. “Lily said she had a lot of fun tonight and wants to know when you’re gonna bring baby Locke back over,”

“I’m sure Jess and I can find some time soon to bring him back. He’s had a bit of a cold, Jess and him were gonna come tonight but she decided to stay home with him.”

Christy smiles, rubbing her hand across Link’s stomach before looking up at her husband. “Lil wants you to go say goodnight. When I took her to bed she wouldn’t go back to sleep until she’s said goodnight to you too,”

Link nods and kisses Christy’s forehead. He reaches out to shake Rhett’s hand and say a quick goodbye before walking off to his daughter’s room.

Christy smiles at Rhett. “She wanted me to tell you that she loves you and thanks for the cookie.”

Rhett grins, crossing his arms over his chest. “She’s so sweet. I can’t believe how big she’s getting. I could’ve sworn you were just in the hospital having her,”

“Her and Locke, both. How have they grown up so fast?”

Rhett shakes his head, sighing heavily. “No idea. They’re just gonna grow faster, too. Before we know it, we’ll be sending them off to college and they’ll be starting their own families,”

Christy groans, shaking her head. “Don’t even start. Let me enjoy the babies while we have them,”

Rhett smiles. “Futurist.”

Christy walks over to him and pulls him in for a hug, feeling Rhett’s long arms uncross from his chest and wrap around her small frame, squeezing her gently. “We wouldn’t be able to do this without you and Jessie,” She says softly against his chest.

“We wouldn’t be able to do this without you and Link, either. We’re all in this together, yeah?”

Christy nods, pulling away and wiping away a stray tear. “Can I tell you a secret?”

Rhett nods, holding her by her shoulders.

“I’m pregnant again. Link and I are gonna have another baby,” She whispers, her eyes bright as she breaks out into a grin.

“Oh my gosh,” He pulls her back in for a hug, kissing the top of her head. “I’m so happy for you guys.” He says softly, smiling wide.

“Link doesn’t know yet,”

“What?”

Christy chuckles, shaking her head and wiping away another tear. “I’m gonna tell him once we’re in bed. Just figured I’d save him the phone call. Plus, I never get to break the good news to you guys. He always steals my thunder,” She jokes.

“You ain’t wrong. Engagement, first baby, Link told me as soon as he possibly could.” He laughs. “How far along are you?”

“Only a few weeks, I think. I haven’t even been to the doctors yet. I took the test after he left for work today. When it came back positive, I took it a few more times to be sure.”

“I’m so happy for you, Chris,” Rhett says softly.

“I’m not far enough along to start telling people, but we’re practically married to you two, too. And we both know how bad Link is at keeping secrets,”

Rhett nods, a big grin still on his lips. “So, I can tell Jess when I get home?”

Christy snorts. “I told her after I took the first pregnancy test this morning.”

Rhett laughs and squeezes her again before letting her go and step away. “I’m happy for you, for both of you. Thank you for trusting Jessie and I with this,” He says, grabbing both her hands in his. “Y’know we love you guys, and if you ever need us to watch Lily for any reason, never hesitate to call,”

Christy smiles and squeezes his hands before letting go and stepping back when Link comes back out. He wraps his arms around Christy from behind, propping his chin on her shoulder.

“I’m sleepy,” He mumbles.

Rhett pulls Christy into a quick hug again before pulling Link into a hug too, squeezing him tight and patting his shoulder. “You two go get some rest. I’m gonna head out,”

They both return the bigger man’s hugs with enthusiasm before he walks out, hopping into his car and heading back to his own home with his own wife and baby.

Link laughs sleepily, pulling Christy towards their bedroom. “He’s not usually a hugger, I wonder if he’s alright?”

Christy smiles, remembering the positive pregnancy tests that are hidden in their bathroom. “I’m sure he’s okay, he’s just a happy guy,”


End file.
